Idaho National Laboratory Environmental Monitoring Plan

5. METEOROLOGICAL MONITORING
The meteorological monitoring program supports laboratory-wide environmental monitoring
activities as well as emergency response. Short- and long-term weather conditions have a substantial
effect on the INL Site environment, particularly with respect to the movement of contaminants in air and
the groundwater system. Meteorological monitoring is performed to record weather conditions such as
wind speed and direction, temperature, and precipitation so that this information may be used with
predictive models to estimate the concentration of contaminants after they have been released to the
environment. Meteorological monitoring results are also used to plan environmental measurement
programs or for modeling required for compliance with air quality regulations. For example, the INL Site
contractors perform modeling to show compliance with ambient air quality regulations and to comply
with requirements to estimate offsite dose (see Section 9 for a discussion of dose assessment modeling).
Figure 5-1 shows the meteorological monitoring locations.
Results of past work related to the tower network are summarized in DOE-ID-12118, (Reference 2),
and DOE-ID-12119 ” (Reference 28).
5.1 NOAA
Meteorological services and supporting research are provided to the INL Site by the NOAA
ARLFRD. ARLFRD provides real-time meteorological data, climatological data, weather predictions,
and dispersion calculations for routine operations and emergency response.
ARLFRD operates a meteorological monitoring network that covers an area of approximately
3,885,000 hectare (15,000 mi 2 ) to characterize the meteorology and climatology of the INL Site. The
network consists of five meteorological towers both on and around the INL Site. Most of the towers are
15 m (49 ft) tall and take wind speeds and direction measurements at 15 m (49 ft), temperatures at 2 m
and 15 m (2.7 and 49 ft), and relative humidity at 2 m (2.7 ft) above ground level. Three taller towers
range from 46 m to 76 m (150 ft to 249 ft) high and are instrumented at multiple levels. Many towers
have additional sensors for precipitation, solar radiation, and barometric pressure. All the tower
measurements are averaged over 5-minute periods and transmitted to ARLFRD in near real-time via
radio-frequency communication. All the ARLFRD towers are outfitted with Geiger-Müller tubes for
detecting ionizing gamma radiation in the air. The radiological measurements are transmitted and
archived with the meteorological data.
In addition to the meteorological towers, ARLFRD operates a 915-MHz radar wind profiler with a
Radio Acoustic Sounding System at a site just north of INTEC. These systems provide wind speed and
direction profiles up to about 4 km (2.5 mi) above ground level and temperature profiles up to about 1 km
(0.6 mi) above ground level, thereby providing crucial information about winds and temperatures aloft.
More recently, ARLFRD added a minisodar system capable of providing high-resolution wind and
turbulence measurements up to 100-150 m (330-500 ft) above the ground.
ARLFRD has also developed a program called INEELViz to display data in near real-time from the
tower network and the vertical profilers. INEELViz has been installed at many office locations both
within and outside the INL Site. It is widely used to support INL Site operations and is a major part of
ARLFRD’s support to the INL Site Emergency Operations Center. A real-time display of the
meteorological data is also available at http://www.noaa.inel.gov/windV/windV.asp. In addition,
ARLFRD now maintains an INL Weather Center at http://niwc.noaa.inel.gov that provides a range of
meteorological information relevant to INL.
5-1 Meteorological Monitoring